This invention relates to electronic devices with limited size displays, such as single array bit-mapped graphical display panels, and to operator interfaces used in such devices. More particularly, the invention relates to a dynamically changing glyph that displays the hardware control options available from any given screen of the graphical user interface.
Small screen displays are disadvantaged by their size in that it is not possible to display all necessary information (i.e. menus, menu options, data, etc.) on the screen at a time. Many features that we take for granted on large color displays cannot be displayed on screens with limited viewing areas such as those used in pagers, portable information devices, palm tops, hand held computers, automobile computers, cellular phones, and so forth.
One area particularly affected by small viewing areas is software navigation. Large displays leverage their large viewing areas to display navigation tools. Traditional navigation cues and design elementsxe2x80x94such as listing options in a menu, arraying selectable icons within a two-dimensional space, or providing scroll bars to scroll textual documentsxe2x80x94have evolved in the context of larger computer monitors and are effective at soliciting understandable and familiar navigation responses from the user.
These traditional navigation controls and design elements are not as useful when designing for small screens. A small screen that displays only one, two, or a few lines at a time cannot afford graphical luxuries such as scroll bars and menu lists.
A side from screen considerations, hardware navigation controls in many electronic devices are not directly associated with the software interface. While users are able to navigate through an interface, there are no visual elements in the interface to indicate which hardware controls are presently available to operate on the content material. For instance, there are no visual elements that tie in the cursor position to the cursor keys. Scroll bars might help navigate a page, but are not directly related to the content on the page, the structure, or position displayed of the document; in short, the scroll bars do not provide any indication of how to actually navigate the content of the document.
In simple pager interfaces, up and down indicators are used in the software interface to show that there is more content in the list, but they do not indicate that actions can be performed on the data (e.g., how to navigate deeper into a hierarchy or discover and set value options on particular screens). In these systems, users are forced to xe2x80x9ctry outxe2x80x9d a hardware control to see if it carries out their desired goal. These inappropriate key presses can cause confusion and lead the user to a place in the interface where they don""t want to be and don""t understand and can contribute to a sense of being lost in the interface.
With these factors in mind, the inventors have sought to design a navigational interface that is effective for electronic devices with small screen areas and, associates on screen navigation tools with hardware controls. Moreover, the inventors sought to design a navigational interface that imparts an integrated hardware/software navigation cue to a user who merely glances at the interface.
This invention concerns an operator interface for electronic devices with small-area screens that are typically incapable of displaying whole sets of navigatable items. Such electronic devices have input mechanisms (e.g., keys, joystick, spin dial, etc.) that enable users to navigate through the navigatable items.
The operator interface includes a navigation glyph having multiple elements that correspond to the input mechanism. The navigation glyph illuminates different sets of the elements to indicate which user-actions on the input mechanism are presently available to navigate from a current location to another location in the set of navigatable items.
In one implementation, the input mechanism includes five hardware keys for up, down, left, right, and enter. The navigation glyph has five different elements corresponding to the five hardware keys. Different colors are used to distinguish between the directional elements and the enter element.
Illumination of selected elements in the navigation glyph dictate what activity can be taken with the corresponding hardware keys. For instance, at one location in a list, the glyph might only consist of the up, down, and enter elements to represent that the user can depress the up, down or enter key to invoke a proper navigation response. The user is free to press the right or left key, but such action will not invoke a response. When the bottom of a list is reached, the glyph might only consist of the up and enter elements to represent that only depression of the up or enter key provide proper navigational input.